A lot of discussions of late have focused on the cash burns of AI companies. OpenAI has been the primary focus and most have concluded that profitability for companies in the business of artificial intelligence is far from sight.
Reports claim OpenAI experienced an $8 billion loss in the first half of 2025, spending $3 for every dollar earned but more recently, Sam Altman says that the company is doing well over $13 billion in revenue, suggesting lower losses.
The company is on track to achieve over $20 billion in annual revenue through 2026, but this would not make it profitable as it plans investing heavily in training and compute power, looking to spend over $1 trillion in the next decade.
What about Anthropic?
The Information reports that Anthropic expects to generate as much as $70 billion in revenue and $17 billion in cash flow in 2028. The growth projections are fueled by rapid adoption of Anthropic’s business products, a person with knowledge of the company’s financials said.
That said, the company expects its gross profit margin — which measures a company’s profitability after accounting for direct costs associated with producing goods and services — to reach 50% this year and 77% in 2028, up from negative 94% last year, per The Information.
The outlet’s reporting also includes a projection of $17 billion in cash flow in 2028.
TechCrunch report | November 4, 2025
Being cash flow positive is pivotal to reaching profitability. OpenAI is not expecting its cash flow to turn positive until 2029 and Anthropic expects it by 2028.
This is less than 4 years from today, suggesting that over the next decade, many AI businesses should be profitable, or at least, cash flow positive.
I think that the industry is fixated on OpenAI's cash burns specifically as it is the leading company. At the same time, I wonder why they ignore that bit of reality which should help them understand why OpenAI might run on losses for a long time.
Anthropic’s Claude reportedly has over 30 million monthly active users, while OpenAI's ChatGPT has over 800 million active weekly users. Clearly, OpenAI has more reasons to burn cash as it has much higher consumer-market exposure.
There currently aren't AI solutions that the consumer market would be willing to pay significantly for. ChatGPT is used for free by most of its users, there are reportedly less than 20 million paying users.
Profitability will likely follow through when OpenAI figures out how to sell to the large consumer market it serves. That being said, not being profitable will not stop this tech from growing in investment, integration and use.
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